Barton: Growth potential of Canadian agriculture 'no small potatoes'

Dominic Barton, chairman of an advisory committee to federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau, responds to a question during an interview with The Canadian Press Thursday, May 19, 2016 in Montreal. The man hand-picked to help revive the Canadian economy enters the job with a lot of hope, but he's adamant that the country needs to act - and soon. Barton, the global managing director of consulting giant McKinsey & Co., was tapped by Finance Minister Bill Morneau to chair a federal advisory council responsible for drawing up a plan to lead Canada out of its cycle of feeble economic growth. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson

As the world’s finance ministers, economists and international financial institution heads grapple with what has been called “secular stagnation” — the chronically moribund post-financial crash uptick in GDPs — McKinsey executive director Dominic Barton is raising the growth potential of agriculture, a sector that rarely figures at the top of such discussions with infrastructure, manufacturing and technology.